1. Field of the Invention
An object of the present invention is a nuclear medicine machine that can be used to acquire static type measurement data, where the machine is fixed with respect to the patient being examined, as well as dynamic type data where it is mobile with respect to the patient. Operations of dynamic acquisition are essentially used to take tomography shots. In acquisition operations of this kind, the motion of the machine is most often a rotation of its detectors around the patient.
The detectors used have a plane input face located above a collimator, with holes that are divergent or parallel, straight or oblique. The collimator is itself placed above a scintillator. This assembly is superimposed on an array of photomultiplier tubes. The photomultiplier tubes are furthermore electronically connected to circuits for the detection and computation of an image. The image results from the totalizing of an operation for counting the number of strokes that occur at a position of the scintillator under the effect of the gamma photons that are emitted by the patient's body and go through the collimator before getting converted into light photons in the scintillator.
The invention is aimed at simplifying the making of such machines so as to reduce the cost of manufacture.
2. Description of the Prior Art
To take tomographic shots, there is a known way of shifting the detectors of a nuclear medicine machine around the patient's body so as to acquire a certain number of views along angles of incidence extending over a range of at least 180.degree.. To accelerate the acquisition of the information elements needed to prepare an image in tomography, ways have already been worked out for building machines with two or even three detectors capable, of approaching the patient in order to accommodate different sizes of patients as well as the difference in the way in which a patient is presented depending on whether he is seen from the side, the front or the back. The machines are furthermore provided with a stand that bears the detectors and is capable of making them rotate around the patient's body so as to acquire views at all the necessary angles of incidence. The stand is not static; it rotates.
These machines of a known type have the drawback of requiring a complex kinematic arrangement resulting in a high cost of manufacture. For, since their weight is great, the detectors can be handled only if they are counter-balanced by dead weights of comparable weight, which also have to be put into motion.